The present embodiments relate to magnetic resonance (MR) guided intervention.
The position of the catheter(s), other medical devices, or features may be determined in medical imaging. Such tracking or position detection may be used in many applications, such as visual surveillance and real-time image guided interventions. However, due to complexity of the application environments, there is possibility that the detection in the images may be inaccurate.
In interventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), tracking of the interventional devices is performed by utilizing locally sensitive small RF coils mounted at particular positions along the device. The localization of the coil is achieved in a few milliseconds by acquiring one dimensional (1D) projections along all three spatial directions (X, Y and Z), and, then, finding the peak or maxima in the power spectra, whose frequency is indicative of the coil position in actual space. Due to interventional device geometry, solenoid coils are utilized for this purpose. For solenoid coils, magnetic resonance (MR) signal contribution is from surrounding tissues, not the device itself. Thus, the location associated with the maximum observed in the power spectra is offset from the actual coil position by a few millimeters. In addition, the width of the peak signal may be about 3-5 mm, which leads to further ambiguity in the detected maxima position.